Kosovo’s prime minister on Tuesday unveiled a plan to ease tensions in the Serb-majority north that would include fresh local elections and cuts to special police, bowing to pressure from key Western supporters of his independence.
But the same day arrest of a Serb identified by Kosovo’s Albanian interior minister as masterminding attacks against NATO peacekeepers during last month’s Serbian protests has ignited new anger in the volatile region.
About 200 Serbs gathered in north Mitrovica to protest the arrest, with Kosovo Albanian police in riot gear just a few hundred meters away. US troops from the KFOR peacekeeping force were also nearby.
During the operation to arrest Milun Milenkovic, three Kosovo Albanian policemen were slightly injured, Interior Minister Xhelal Svecla said on his Facebook page.
About 30 peacekeepers and 52 Serbs were injured in clashes late last month after ethnic Albanian mayors took office following a local election in which voter turnout was just 3.5 percent as Serbs, who make up the majority in the region, boycotted the vote.
The United States and the European Union have called on Prime Minister Albin Kurti to remove mayors, remove the special police used to instate them, and back a 2013 deal for an association of autonomous Serb municipalities in the region.
Kurti said that “violent (Serb) groups have been withdrawn from the territory of Kosovo (and therefore) the presence of Kosovo police troops in three municipal buildings will be reduced”.
“The government of the Republic of Kosovo will coordinate with all actors and announce snap elections in four northern municipalities,” Kurti said at a news conference after meeting with the ambassadors of the United States, Italy, France, Germany and the United Kingdom, known like the group on Thursday
He said he presented his plan to EU and US envoys and called a follow-up meeting between Serbian and Kosovar officials in Brussels, where the EU is based.
Source: Terra
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